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'Ocean Burps' Leave Oddities on Seaside Beaches |
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Covering 180 miles of Oregon coast travel: Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Nehalem, Wheeler, Rockaway, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Oceanside, Pacific City, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport, Waldport, Yachats & Florence.
March 3, 2006
Secrets of the Season |
'Ocean Burps' Leave Oddities on Seaside Beaches
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| 'Ocean burp' in Seaside (courtesy Seaside Aquarium) |
(Seaside, Oregon) - The north Oregon coast town of Seaside has been the recipient of a somewhat unusual sight in recent weeks, with what is sometimes referred to as “ocean burps.” The technical term is detritus, and it means the ocean is casting some interesting objects from the depths onto the shores – things you don’t normally find on the beaches.
Keith Chandler, manager of the Seaside Aquarium, said these ocean burps happen under just the right conditions, when the right mix of storms happen along with the right kind of ocean currents.
“It’s an upwelling of stuff from the ocean floor,” Chandler said.
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| Moon snails | Pumice
from the upwelling |
Beachcombers will spot a brownish mass of wood and grassy matter from afar, but up close is a small treasure chest of natural oddities like cockleshells, hermit crabs, squid eggs, casings from other eggs, moon snail shells and somewhat rare rock finds.
“If you see a patch of dark brown on the beach, go look through it because you’ll find some cool stuff,” Chandler said.
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One episode of this detritus occurred in February, where Chandler found 30 live cockleshells – a form of clam. He also found numerous squid egg casings and some live squid eggs, which are now at the aquarium and are being cared for so they will hatch.
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| Sea sponges |
Another detritus happened just this past week, yielding more oddities.
Moon snail shells are rare, Chandler said, and quite attractive, with their intricate, swirling designs. “They can be about the size of a baseball,” he said.
The latest episode of detritus provided other goodies, such as the lightweight volcanic rock pumice, a sea sponge and more egg casings and live eggs. Sometimes species of starfish rarely seen out of the ocean get chucked up onto the beaches with these episodes.
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| Squid eggs, hopefully hatched soon |
Chandler said seagulls love these, and make a feast on them. “One minute they’re happy and safe on the bottom of the ocean, and then all of a sudden they’re staring into the eye of a seagull,” Chandler said.
It’s
not possible to predict these events, Chandler said, but if two happen
in close succession, there’s a good chance another one or two upwellings
of these objects will happen again. The conditions that create them are
somewhat of a mystery – or at least very unpredictable, Chandler
said.
“It’s a beachcomber’s cornucopia,” Chandler said. He added these interesting natural events tend to happen a little more often in the Seaside area than some areas of the coast.
For more oddities on the coast, see the companion stories, Oregon Travel Secrets: Weird Science, Spring Rarities on the Coast and Oregon Tourism Alert: Spring Rarities in Newport
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